This week’s Fireside features Antioch’s own Louima and T.J. Jarrett

The third in a series of Antioch College Fireside readings will feature two African American writers, Gariot Louima and T.J. Jarrett, reading short fiction and poetry on Sunday, Feb. 27. The event begins at 2 p.m. at the Corretta Scott King Center on the college campus.

Louima, director of communications at the college, is a fiction writer and former journalist. His stories have appeared in The Caribbean Writer and Carte Blanche, and are forthcoming in the anthology The Haiti I Knew, The Haiti I Know, The Haiti I Want to Know. He was a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers.

T.J. Jarrett is a writer and poet whose recent work has been published or is forthcoming in the African American Review, the Boston Review, Calaloo, Linebreak, and Third Coast. Her manuscript, “The Moon Looks Down and Laughs,” was a finalist for the Tampa Review Poetry Prize.

When the Sun Nears the Earth in the West

by T. J. Jarrett

we chase it. The ghosts follow, followed then by the dark. It has come to my attention that it is possible,

due to recent technological advances, to live only in sun. You could fuel mid-air if you like; you could simply

quit the earth. Someone could do that. That someone could be you. You could read this and nod, yes, yes. Take me to a

place without darkness. It would be unwriterly for me to do so. Worse— Irresponsible. Uncharitable. Let me tell you how

to withstand the dark: The dark will go on only as long as you let it. You must forgive the dark. It never takes you

into account. Forgive the earth that bears the dark on its back. Forgive then, the ghosts you carry. Touch them

on the cheek tenderly, each one, and send them on ahead of you. Forgive the stars their disinterested twinkling. Forgive the

air and trees. You will experience weightlessness. Forgive the gravity that holds you. Behold the spinning earth. Choose.